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<title>Bill Wattenburg’s Background: Golden Gate Bridge Traffic Barrier</title>
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<h1>Golden Gate Bridge Traffic Barrier</h1>

<h2>(1982–1984)</h2>

<p>Another series of newspaper articles in 1982–1984 describe how Wattenburg did the
“<a href="BART.html">BART story</a>” again on the over-confident Golden Gate Bridge
engineers who insisted that a moveable
anti-collision barrier could not be designed that would fit between the traffic lanes on the bridge
and meet the requirement that it be moved twice each day to allow reallocation of the lanes for
rush hour flow. The Bridge’s private engineering firm was being paid over a million dollars a
year to advise the bridge district. Numerous fatal head-on collisions had made this a very
controversial subject. A frustrated bridge director called on Wattenburg to find a solution. A few
weeks later he came up with a design that stunned the confident engineers—and evidently
fascinated the press and the public because it was so simple.</p>

<p>His solution was to use sections of large-diameter (24″) round steel pipe which are strung together
on a strong steel cable like a spaghetti necklace. He later proved that the steel pipe is as strong as
conventional concrete lane dividers. The steel pipe can be rolled from lane to lane quite easily to
change traffic flow patterns. Once Wattenburg had proved that the problem could be solved by at
least one inexpensive scheme, two other companies quickly came forth with alternate designs of
their own. Internal politics over where and how money should be spent on bridge improvements
has delayed installation of any of these anti-collision barriers to date. However, other bridges
around the world have installed movable traffic barriers which are renditions of Wattenburg’s
patented design that he offered to give the Golden Gate Bridge District free-of-charge.</p>

<p>The head of one embarrassed engineering firm working for the bridge district attacked
Wattenburg’s credentials to be doing work for the district without having a license as a
professional engineer (he evidently assumed that Wattenburg must be getting paid). Wattenburg’s
terse response to the press was: “I don’t take public money for exposing high-priced fools who
pretend to be competent engineers.”</p>

<p>Bill Wattenburg and his son, Eric, who was an engineering student at California State
University, Chico, were issued a patent on their movable pipe barrier design in 1987. His son
had designed the mechanism that automatically rolls the pipe barrier from lane to lane while
keeping it tied down securely to the bridge deck or roadway at all times. Wattenburg said that he
was about to give up on the pipe barrier idea because he hadn’t solved this problem. Eric picked
up the problem one weekend and found a clever solution that made the whole scheme practical.
Eric built a fully operational scale model that he demonstrated to the Golden Gate Bridge
Directors.</p>

<p>Wattenburg told us that movable pipe barriers are still the cheapest and best traffic barriers
that can be quickly installed around many places that could be attacked by vehicles carrying
bombs or terrorists, such as government buildings, embassies oversees, and troop encampments
in hostile places. “The military will get around to it someday, after we lose another few hundred
of our people.”</p>

<hr />

<p><i>Note: It took until late 1998 before anyone paid serious attention to
Wattenburg’s idea of using the barrier to protect against truck bombs. The San
Francisco Chronicle reported
on the successful testing performed by Lawrence Livermore National Labs (October 8, 1988).
Unfortunately, the device still has not been used to this date.—PKS</i></p>

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